Perfection
by bright red shirt
Summary: The camera is not the only one watching Jim and Pam.


Perfection

eI was a pretty girl once. Beautiful. Really something, as my grandmother used to say. When I was a teenager, I'd go out with a different boy every Saturday night. We'd have dinner and see a movie and at the end of the night, if I liked him enough, and well, if he was a cutie, I'd let him kiss me goodnight. He'd call me and ask me to go out again the following weekend, but I'd always say no. Maybe he was a too short, or his teeth were too crooked, or his clothes were too wrinkled. It's not that I was stuck up or anything, I just always thought there was someone better out there.

I found the perfect one, once. But I let him get away. He was everything I always wanted. Funny and charming. Handsome. Perfect, really. We met when I was twenty-four. I was a waitress at a restaurant around the corner from the local university and he was a student. A psychology major. Four years my junior, but boy if I didn't love him from the first minute I laid eyes on him.

It had been a bad day for me. It was busy and everywhere I looked there were rude customers demanding refills and substitutions and leaving me lousy tips. Really awful. And out of the corner of my eye I saw this boy walk in. Taller than anyone else, with disheveled brown hair and the loveliest eyes I had ever seen. He sat down at the counter with this big, dusty book, and he just sat there reading it, ordering coffee and cookies for the next four hours. He left as we were closing, leaving me no tip, just a note that gave me his phone number and a promise to take me to dinner the next evening I had off. I'm a romantic, I really am. Of course I called him, and the next night we went out.

I should have been happy. And for a while, I was. I slept with him probably a little too early, but I was so in love. And he was so perfect. I imagined our perfect life together, with our perfect house and our perfect kids, and all I saw was, well, perfection.

And then I started noticing just how perfect he was. And it started to bother me. I started being irrationally mean to him, ignoring his phone calls and picking fights. It really hurt him, I could tell. He started looking tired all the time, and I think I may have been killing him slowly. I really loved him. I did. I just always thought there was something better.

We dated for two years before he got fed up. We were fighting one night, and I accused him of being a pushover with no direction in his life. And he got this look in his eyes that broke my heart and I tried to apologize. Begged him to forgive me. But he was through. He closed the door and that was the last I saw him.

I stopped dating after that. I told myself I just needed some "me" time. And I had that time for the next ten years.

I started losing my looks around age thirty-six. My hair went prematurely gray, I put on a few pounds, and basically I just stopped caring. I thought about him a lot in those ten years. I wondered what he was up to, where he was, what he was doing. I considered looking him up a few times, but I knew that I was just a bad memory to him. Some pretty girl that had killed his spirit.

I wasn't pretty anymore. My confidence was gone. My deepest desires were suddenly to have everyone like me. So I became really quiet. Minded my own business, only speaking to compliment someone. And one day it hit me that I was thirty-six, hadn't had a date in ten years, and had been working in a dead-end job for the past six of those years. Suddenly I was the pushover with no direction in my life.

It happened the evening of my thirty-seventh birthday. Everyone else had gone home for the night, leaving the two of us behind to finish up. I didn't want it to happen, because he was fifteen years older than me, and I don't mean to be unkind or anything, but he was a little strange. It had been ten years though, and I was depressed and lonely and I just needed someone. I regret it of course, but really I don't even think he even remembers…

I have a boyfriend now. We're really happy and I think we'll get married some day. He's not perfect. He's not handsome, or funny, or charming. But he's kind. Really kind. And he loves me as much as I love him. It's too late for children, but that's okay with me. I don't really care much for perfection anymore. It got me nowhere except old and alone. I think about him a lot. I wonder what his life is like. He's probably married now, with lovely children, and a beautiful wife. She's probably so proud of him. I wish I could have been proud of him.

I enjoy work these days. It's really interesting. Kind of like a soap opera. I watch the two of them a lot. Sometimes I picture myself as a matchmaker, but it's hard work. They're both so dense sometimes! I imagine what their life could be, and I see a lot of my old dreams in them. He reminds me a lot of what I used to have. He's funny and handsome and charming. Just like…well, the past is the past. Sometimes I wish I were fifteen years younger, because he's so perfect. And I wish she'd open her eyes, but they're both just kids and they don't get it. You can't wait around forever, because you don't _have _forever.

I may just be an old romantic, but she _loves _him, I just know it. It's the way she looks at him, and laughs with him. A girl can always tell. And she looks at him when she doesn't think he's looking, and he does the same to her. But what they don't know is that I'm looking. I watch the two of them like hawks, because they're destined for each other. They're just too dense sometimes.

And I try to encourage them, but maybe that's wrong. She's engaged after all. And her fiancé, forgive me, but he's an oaf. Handsome, sure, but they're not right for each other at all. I'm invited to the wedding, and boy if it happens I'll be the one unable to forever hold my peace. Isn't that romantic? The two lovers, unknowingly brought together at the last second by the kindly older woman. I get goose bumps just thinking about it!

Today, I get ready to leave for work, just like I always do. But something holds me back, and once everyone's gone, I stop at her desk.

"Don't compromise, okay sweetheart?" And she stares at me as I wink at her and walk out the door.

I have to hurry home and change. We're having a big office party tonight, down in the warehouse. Something to do with gambling. I don't care for it, but Bobby's donated a refrigerator.

I have to look my best, because you never know what will happen!


End file.
